Family

I was again reminded this week how the “natural flow” of my life can be easily filled with deadlines, meetings, driving kids to sports, and collapsing on the couch exhausted at the end of the day. This is by no means unusual for anyone in our culture. So that’s why living as a disciple of Jesus in community is so counter-cultural and challenging to implement.

The temptation will be to try and live this way on top of an already full life. That is doomed to fail. What we need is a way to keep reflecting on the assumptions and motivations that lie behind where we choose to invest our time, energy, and resources. Quite bluntly, this is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said, “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”

Now before you think I’m going to lay down some heavy guilt trip, please stop right there. I am by no means standing here as someone who has figured all this out. But, God has given me the job of reflecting on what it means to be the church – a community of disciples of Jesus – in 21st century South Florida. Hopefully this will help us collectively find more freedom and become more like the people God created us to be.

Here’s the truth: the natural flow of secular life is towards self-preservation and self-fulfillment. Ironically, the drive to achieve the “perfect life” results in – quite literally – death. Hell is the natural result of someone who has worshipped the idol of self to the point where the image of God is no longer reflected in their lives. For those who have not entrusted their lives to Jesus, eventually that reflection is destroyed. The prison of self destroys the very thing it was trying to preserve.

This is all, of course, very ironic. “Just let us be human!” is the rallying cry of those trying to live out the secular dream. “Just let us be free to do what we want!” But humans were made to reflect the glory of God! And you become like what you worship! So if you worship yourself you don’t become more human, you become less human. Real humanity is becoming more like the Creator himself. Real freedom is found in worship of the Creator and living life as he always intended.

So we need to begin there. What we worship lays the foundation for becoming more or less human, more or less free.

“God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure” – Eph. 1:5

“He pointed to his disciples and said, “Look, these are my mother and brothers. Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother!” Matthew 12:49-50

One of major themes of the New Testament is family. Jesus’ redefinition of what it meant to be the people of God was a radical departure from traditional Jewish ideas of family. Paul’s recognition of our adoption into God’s family, for both Jew and Gentile, took this a step further. All of the barriers between race, sex, economic status, and religious identity were torn down. Under Jesus, a new humanity had been created.

I believe that this revelation of family can fundamentally change our understanding of the nature of church and mission. Grasping God’s kingdom is a necessary first step. But often we put the kingdom at odds with the church. Family bridges the gap and provides a natural container for acts of the kingdom. Instead of strategizing how to make existing church structures more missional, we need to grasp how the family of God is the greatest missionary strategy in history.

I’ve wrestled over the years on how to help our community become more focused on what God is doing “out there”. But then some hopeless, broken, or lonely person comes in contact with one of us and gets adopted. I love watching the process. Generally, Amber and I have very little involvement. The tractor-beam of the Holy Spirit takes over and they become a member of the family. I have seen nothing more effective, lasting, and transformative than this process.

The problem, of course, is that you can’t manufacture family. What has developed in our community has taken years. Leadership has been important, but only to brush aside the distractions so the real thing could grow unhindered. In some cases, the less you do as a leader, the better. But there is a critical function that will never disappear: families need Moms and Dads. Paul understood this function well. It can be extremely frustrating at times, especially when the kids start to grow up and forget that they wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for you. Read 1 Corinthians sometime with the eyes of Papa Paul. Painful…but also beautiful.

So we are learning how to birth spiritual families, help them grow into maturity, teach them how to honor each other, and release them to adopt many more brothers and sisters. This is the foundation of missional church. Everything we do is built on this foundation or it will crumble under the weight of our own innovation.

I spent a few minutes this morning reading new posts from my old blog friends. I miss that connectivity, hearing what is on the minds of people below the mundane surface. Facebook has pretty much destroyed that interaction for me. I now know 10 times more useless information about 10 times more people, most of whom I don’t even remember that well. The relationships forged through blogging starting 8 years ago have stood the test of time. Even though I don’t talk to all of them regularly, I would feel more comfortable going to them in a crisis than 98% of my Facebook “friends”.But my point here isn’t to air grievances about Facebook. It’s to have a space to get underneath the mundane for a few minutes…to write about what is on my mind, not what I ate for breakfast. Last year, I basically took a sabbatical from writing. Finishing the book in 2008 was a great accomplishment, but it didn’t leave me with much energy for writing. In reality, there wasn’t much time or much that I felt that I could write about. In many ways I am back in a deep learning phase, experimenting and quietly thinking. I filled up a notebook this year which is a good indication of the kind of year it’s been. Amber and I are broadening our network and putting our energy into new community growth. It’s been a good year for tilling new ground, but there has also been the effort and pain that goes along with that.This week I began studying for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam. It’s the first step in attaining my professional engineering license. Most engineers took the F.E. during their last year of college, but industrial engineers (like me) did not. So I’m re-learning things I first learned more than 15 years ago for the test in April. I wanted to quit about 5 times this week…it’s brutal. So that will be my life for the next three months, whatever the outcome.Long story short, there will be no writing until after the test. Will I blog again on a regular basis? I hope so. I do have some new things to say and maybe even another book to write at some point. Until then, I’ll have my nose in a study book and maybe scratch a thought in my notebook once in a while. See you in May.

I’m home sick today, finally succumbing to whatever virus my kids have been carrying around the last week. Out my back window, across the canal, there sits a police car. If you keep up with the news, no doubt you’ve heard about the 4 people who were killed by a family member on Thanksgiving day here in Jupiter. (Here’s the related stories in the local paper.)

Amber used to teach music to the little girl that died, so we’ve known the family for a few years. Needless to say, it’s been a surreal last few days. Thankfully we were in Gainesville when it happened…I’ve been thinking for a while how much my life, calling, and actual ministry has changed over the past few years.

I still keep up with the conversation on how the church and culture are changing. My observation is that there is still a better mousetrap out there – a new way to do church that will “fix” all the problems we see. That, of course, is the American Way. We believe there is change around the corner; we just need the right president in office or the right model for our business or the right piece of technology.And then something happens like what took place a hundred yards outside my back window.I spent some time with a good friend two weekends ago that has had a similar story to mine. On track in a ‘ministry career’, left with huge questions, started a small faith community in a suburban area, now working out the answers for the long haul. We’ve both dealt with our fair share of tragedies and the raw implications of sin within our communities. We’ve seen friends die and marriages dissolve. But we’ve also seen lost, broken people become whole. We’ve seen those without a family find a family and we’ve seen dreams come alive that were very much dead.But these are all things you can’t talk about on a blog. These are stories that can’t be written about in a book and sold to the Christian masses as the answer to all their problems. This is not the American Way. What my friend and I are finding is that the answers to our questions – where our lives are finding meaning and bearing the most fruit – are within a context that matters nothing to our society. The small, the simple, the un-heard-of. Who we are cannot be written in a mission statement or expressed through a statement of faith. There are things we know and believe, but they are ultimately just words on a page. We are following a living Being and we have assurance of real resurrection. Either lives are transformed and the dead rise or we are fools. Jesus is more than a idea to a man who is able to say about his dead daughter – “I was the last one to put her to bed. So her daddy put her to sleep, and her Father woke her up.”Here is a little encouragement to anyone who might read this who is going into ministry or has a desire to serve the church in some capacity. Stop trying to build a better mousetrap. Stop the theological wranglings about things you’ll never be able to live. Stop trying to be famous. Like a good farmer, plant seeds and care for your soil. Like a good builder, build with the best materials. Take your time and don’t be shocked when things don’t work out like you thought. Tragedy shouldn’t surprise you. Death is not the end. As the Apostle Paul quotes Isaiah and Hosea: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory?Where, O death, is your sting?”